Green blooms: Patches of Antarctica’s snow is turning green with algae due to global warming

Greeny 🗾 blooms: Patches of 🏔Antarctica’s ❄snow is turning green with algae due to global warming🌀



According to the researchers, the measurements were taken from Antarctica’s Ryder Bay, Adelaide Island, the Fildes Peninsula and King George Island. These showed that the Antarctic Peninsula has undergone the most rapid warming in the last century. A heatwave in Antarctica had melted around 20% of snow from 🦅 Eagle Island on the northeastern peninsula of the continent in just about nine days in February this year.


Researchers have found that the microscopic algae that grow on the surface of snow along the Antarctic Peninsula are going to further spread with rising temperatures. The results come from creating the first large-scale map of the green algae across the area.

The study was conducted by a team of researchers from the University of Cambridge and the British Antarctic Survey. They studied the European Space Agency satellite data from 2017 and 2019 and gathered on-spot measurements to map the microscopic alga.

The microscopic beings, when they bloom on a large area simultaneously, turn the snow bright green and can be spotted from space, scientists have revealed in an article in Nature.


These algae grow along the Antarctic peninsula coastline, which is warmer in comparison to the other regions. Temperatures of a little more than zero degrees Celsius during the Southern Hemisphere's summer months of November to February are optimal conditions for their growth.

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